Olympics Journalists' Complaints Crack Open Net Access A Bit in China

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Olympics Journalists' Complaints Crack Open Net Access A Bit in China

More people in China have access to more independent sources of news and information online in the wake of complaints by Olympics journalists' about web censorship, according to a new report from the OpenNet Initiative, a group that studies internet censorship practices around the world.

Foreign journalists work at the i-lounge inside the Olympic Main Press Center(MPC) in Beijing Thursday, July 31, 2008. Olympic organizers backtracked on a promise made in advance of the Beijing Games, keeping in place several blocks on internet sites in the Main Press Center and venues where reporters work.

(AP Photo/Andy Wong)"It's only a small token number of sites," says Rob Faris, a research director at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, one of the members of the OpenNet Initiative. "But there's lots of opinions for people to read before they're quickly shut down."

Recent tests by the center found that when the Chinese authorities unblocked access to several news, advocacy and information sites after Olympics journalists complained about restricted internet access in July, they unblocked access across several geographic locations in China, and not only for the Olympics press in Beijing.

The finding is noteworthy because the Chinese authorities have the ability to selectively block content. They could have chosen to simply unblock access to the sites for the journalists in Beijing, Faris said. That's what the Tunisian government did when dignitaries across the world converged in the country's capital of Tunis in 2005 for the World Summit On The Information Society. Attendees of the summit in Tunis enjoyed unfettered access, while the rest of the country's citizens did not.

"We were curious about what they were going to do during the Olympics, so our testing was tailored for that," Faris said. "We were interested in whether there was going to be different filtering policies for those in the media center, and other places in Beijing, and other places in China. The answer seems to be no, and that's interesting."

The Chinese government had promised greater press freedom and access to information as a condition of winning the bid to host the games. But many sites have remained unaccessible throughout the Olympics. Faris said the OpenNet Initiative's researchers were wondering whether the authorities were going to "paint themselves into a corner," by merely providing unfettered access to journalists and no-one else.

The study also provided a long list of sites that its researcher in the Main Press Center tried to access, but were blocked as of July 25. These include dozens of sites about Tibet, and other minorities such as the Uyghurs, and the sites of watchdog and independent media groups.

The Chinese authorities deployed several different kinds of technical methods to block access to the sites. The different techniques all have their pros and cons in terms of how efficient the blocking mechanism is, and how difficult it makes it for the determined to get around the blockages.

"I don't know how they decide to choose one versus another," he said. "But there are certainly network management considerations."